Chocolate Chip Nice Cream

Everyone in my family loves ice cream. We are borderline obsessed with the stuff! It gives us an indescribable joy, especially when we get to share it with one another. It’s no secret that ice cream is not always the healthiest treat. We still enjoy our fair share and much smaller portions of Ben & Jerry’s or Baskin Robbin’s every now and then but imagine my excitement when I found out you could use bananas to make a healthy “ice cream” – nice cream!

The first time I tried making nice cream, I followed the directions on most recipes - slice and freeze the bananas and then use a food processor to puree until smooth and creamy. Well the first time I did this it was much more difficult than I thought. I guess my food processor wasn’t very strong because it died in the process before all of the bananas were pureed. I moved the bananas to the blender and then to the Magic Bullet. It took quite sometime and did turn out creamy, however I didn’t think the time required was worth the end result.

A few weeks later I remembered that I had an actual ice cream maker! I was determined to try nice cream again and am so glad that I did. This time was much easier and I had delicious ice cream in no time. All I had to do was blend the ingredients in the Magic Bullet/blender and throw it into the ice cream maker that took care of the rest. If you love ice cream as much as we do, but want to keep healthy, I would totally recommend getting an ice cream maker. I have this Bella ice cream maker, which is very inexpensive for what it can do.

This is the only flavor of nice cream that I’ve made so far, but I’m definitely going to experiment more in the future.

What flavor should I try to make next time?

Coconut milk banana mixture ready to be blended

My Bella ice cream maker

Swirling in the chocolate chip mixture

Looks just like real ice cream!

Tips:

·      The Bella ice cream maker can churn clockwise and counterclockwise, but there is no button to instruct it on which way to turn. You can however continue to turn it off and then on again until it turns in the direction you want. I change the direction once or twice before the ice cream is complete.

·      After the first night in the freezer, the ice cream will become pretty hard. I usually leave it on the counter while we’re eating dinner, which gives it enough time to soften up and become the perfect consistency come dessert time!